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On
the
website
American
Merchant
Marine
at War www.usmm.org
we have a list of 8,000 men and women held prisoner on the
British
prison
ship Jersey in Wallabout Bay. Many were privateers, but there
are
others.
Note left in query section 05/22/2001 by Toni
Horodysky.

Certainly
the
truth
can
now
be told without arousing
animosity. The historian has a duty to narrate the facts, no
matter how
gruesome they may be. In this instance, it tells the story of
unrivaled
American heroism and also reveals the frightful horrors suffered
by and American
prisoners in the disease-infested prison ships in New York
harbor.
While many have portrayed these ships to be as nice as the cheap
hotels, that was not the
case. It was actually
one of the most tragic, but little-known, events in American
history.
Actually, three times as many American
Patriots
were liquidated - 13,000 on the infamous British prison ships
and in
New
York prisons-than the 4,300 killed in the American armed forces
during
the entire war. It is only right that the terrible fate of these
early
American Patriots and heroes, who preferred death to disloyalty,
should
be publicly known.
If there are still Americans influenced
by
the Revolutionary War propaganda emanating from New England, let
them
pause
and read impartially the story of the martyrdom of I 3,000
American
prisoners
in the foul, overcrowded jails, in disease-infested, rotting
hulks; in
the loathsome warehouses and sugar factories in New York City
during
our
War for Independence. New England was fortunate in knowing
little of
such
horrors and atrocities, although many of their sailors died
unknown in
the British hell ships.
Last but not least were the densely
crowded
churches, and warehouses
where Patriot American prisoners died like
rats,
of disease and hunger. In the summertime, they suffered from
suffocation
and, being without covering,
froze to death or died of pneumonia in the
winter. With little food and scanty water, the health of the
prisoners
was quickly undermined, which left them no power of resistance
to the
mass
attack of dysentery, typhoid fever, smallpox, yellow fever,
tuberculosis,
and contagious diseases of all kinds. The food was not only
insufficient
to keep body and soul together, but was often putrid.
There was obviously a conspiracy among
Provost
Marshal William Cunningham, Commissary ]oshua Loring, and Naval
Commissary
David Sprout, down to the lowly prison guards, to decimate the
rebel
prisoners.
"Decimate" is not the correct word, as it means taking the death
toll
of
only one of every ten. The proper word should be "annihilation"
or
"extermination,"
for that is what it amounted to. It was one of the most horrible
and
awesome
tragedies in American history. There is nothing to compare with
it in
military
history since the religious wars 400 years ago, except the
butchery of
the Jews by the Nazis. The Black Hole of Calcutta, in which
English
soldiers
in overcrowded prisons were suffocated to death, is the nearest
resemblance
to what occurred on the terrible prison ships and in other
British
prisons
in New York City, Charleston, and Savannah.
Ten thousand American Patriots, mostly
in
their early twenties or thirties, imprisoned on board the
inhuman
British
prison ship Jersey, were given stinking food and literally
starved to
death
or died of disease. This extermination policy now appears to
have been
a deliberate conspiracy not only among the prison commissaries,
but
actually
by the British High Command.
These unfortunate victims of the
Revolution
were buried in the sands of the adjacent shore of Wallabout Bay,
where
the Navy Yard in Brooklyn was located. Twenty years after the
war, in
making
walls and building sites, a vast quantity of the bones of these
martyrs
were dislodged and strewn over the shore. They were, however,
collected
by Captain John Jackson, the proprietor of the neighboring land,
and
re-interred
at his expense. Later still, public ceremonies were held over
this
common
grave, but even to this day these American Patriots, who
preferred
death
at its worst rather than disloyalty to their country, are still
the
forgotten
heroes of our War for Independence.
The Jersey was by far the largest
prison hulk,
but there were others, and several so-called hospital ships
which were
almost equally as bad. Captain Freneau, who was confined on
board both
hospital and prison ships, survived by being exchanged.
The silent acquiescence of Lord Howe
and other
British generals in the tragic and criminal actions of Provost
Marshal
Cunningham, Commissary Loring, and Naval Commissary Sprout and
their
evil
subordinates is appalling and difficult to explain. The author
has
spent
considerable time investigating the records of this frightful
tragedy,
and feels that there is no longer any reason to cover tip this
mass
murder
of American heroes by disease, starvation, overcrowding, and the
elements.
It can be compared to a more recent and
even
more horrendous crime, but actually much more merciful, and that
was
the
mass murder by shooting of 12,000 Polish officers
the Communists in
Katyn Forest and in other parts of Russia. At least they did not
die by
degrees-a living death.
Naturally, the British used every
propaganda
device when they capitulated and evacuated New York City to
cover up
their
responsibility for these prison dens of iniquity and death and
for the
stinking hulks of abomination and desolation. The evidence is
contained
in the letters written by prisoners who survived. There is also
the
word
of escaped and exchanged prisoners. Then there is the report
made by
Elias
Boudinot, appointed commissioner by Congress to secure the
exchange of
prisoners, to provide them with clothing and food, and to
investigate
the
situation in some of the New York prisons, by consent of the
British.
Eight years after the prison doors were
opened
as a result of the American victory, William Cunningham, the
notorious
former provost marshal, made a pre- hanging confession in
writing. He
was
hanged in England in 1791 for forgery. Cunningham was a
thoroughly
vicious
character. He was the son of a British soldier, brought up in
Ireland.
He became engaged in the illicit business of shipping indentured
servants
to Boston and New York under false pretenses. The last shipment
was
freed
by the New York courts.
From that time on, Cunningham developed
an
intense and bitter hatred of American Patriots. He came to New
York and
became a leader among a gang of "bully boys" who annoyed and
picked
fights
with the Whigs or Patriots. On one occasion, the retaliation by
the
Sons
of Liberty was instantaneous. Cunningham was beaten and forced
to get
on
his knees and bellow for liberty. The chastisement by the
Liberty Boys
added insult to injury and increased his intense hatred of the
Patriots.
Later, when he became provost marshal, he brutally treated the
American
prisoners who came under his absolute reign of terror. He
ingratiated
himself
with General Howe and other British authorities because of his
well-
known
hatred of the so-called American rebels.
General Howe, as commander in chief,
cannot
escape his responsibility for appointing Cunningham, a person of
the
lowest
character, to the important office of provost marshal. The
appointment
of such a ruffian and scoundrel and his bloody acts of reprisals
and
hangings
are a black mark on the record of General Howe and Sir Henry
Clinton,
before
God and man. They not only had a direct responsibility for the
acts of
their agent, but they obviously knew the terrible situation in
the
prisons,
yet kept Cunningham in office during the entire time of their
command.
Howe had a direct link also with
Commissioner
Loring, whom he appointed. Loring was a Boston Loyalist and a
contemptible
character second only to Cunningham, in greed, graft, and
starvation of
prisoners, besides selling his wife to Howe for the appointment.
This
is
not just unfounded gossip, but a fact well known in New York
during the
Revolution, and related afterwards by the historians of that
period.
Later,
Loring admitted he misappropriated two-thirds of the allowance
for
prison
food, resulting in the starvation of the American prisoners
which
caused
them in their weakened condition to die off like flies before
the
ravages
of disease and exposure. When the American commissioner, Elias
Boudinot,
asked Cunningham who was responsible for the loathsome
conditions of
the
prisons, he arrogantly replied that he was entirely responsible
and
that
he saw no reason for any change or excuses.
He had an assistant by the name of
Sergeant
O'Keefe, a cruel, brutal blackguard who treated the prisoners
worse
than
condemned criminals. He was probably the secret hangman or at
least in
charge of almost 300 private, unofficial hangings ordered and
directed
by Cunningham without any kind of trial. The public hangings
were those
of spies British deserters, and condemned criminals. It is
inconceivable
that under British army control such bestial and lethal
treatment of
prisoners
of war was permitted and continued almost to the end of the war.
The confession of Cunningham deals with
his
early life and the reasons for his hatred of American Patriots.
The
fact
that it was made eight years after the war when he was hung is
not
unusual.
The famous trial of Adolph Eichman, the Nazi executioner of the
Jews in
the German concentration camps, was held in Israel sixteen years
after the end of World War II. Memoirs by participants of that
war are
still flourishing. It is not surprising, however, that the
British
authorities
did everything in their power to cover it up, and denounced
Cunningham's
confession as a forgery just as the Nazis tried to hide their
iniquities
in the concentration and extermination camps. Commissioner
Loring, who
admitted appropriating the money for the prisoners' food, and
who was
responsible
for the deaths of a large number of them from starvation,
escaped
hanging
and died shortly after the war in England.
Both Cunningham and Loring combined did
not
cause one-fourth as many deaths of American Patriots as Naval
Commissioner
Sprout in the old death-trap prison ships. Cunningham and Loring
killed
off, between them, approximately 2,500 prisoners through
starvation,
sickness,
and privation in the city prisons, warehouses, churches, and in
the
Provost
jail, whereas 10,500 helpless prisoners died of disease and
putrid food
in the stinking British hulks.
The prisoners actually rotted away until
death took
them out of the dismal hulks. They were virtually murdered,
these
13,000,
one-third of which were civilians. The lucky ones were those who
escaped
or were exchanged. If we estimate 1,000 were exchanged, 100
escaped,
and
200 more permitted to go free through bribery or parole, the
percentage
of death amounted to 75 percent, as compared with Andersonville
and
Elmira
prisons of 33 percent in our Civil War. The death rate of French
and
British
prisoners of war in German prison camps was not more than 15
percent,
and
actually less for American prisoners. The estimated death rate
on the
Jersey
was 85 percent. The author places the total American prisoner
mortality
at 13,000, which is 1 ,000 less than other estimates.
The following is an extract from the
Life
Confession and Last Dying Words of William Cunningham, formerly
the
British
provost marshal in the City of New York who was executed in
London the
10th of August, 1791 , taken from his own mouth by the Ordinary
of
Newgate.
The first part deals with his early life, which is unimportant.
He was
born in Dublin Barracks in the year 1738, the son of an English
soldier,
and his early life was mostly connected with the army. In 1772,
at
Newry,
Ireland, he engaged in the business of enticing mechanics and
country
people
to ship themselves to America on promises of great advantages.
Then he
artfully obtained indentures upon them, the consequence of which
was
that
on their arrival in America they were told of it and obliged to
serve a
term of years for their passage. Quoting from the Confession:

I
embarked
at
Newry,
in
a
ship Needham, for New York, and arrived at
that
port the fourth of August, 1774, with
some
indentured
servants
I
had
kidnaped in Ireland. But they were liberated
in New York on account of the bad
usage
they
received
from
me
during the passage. When the war commenced,
I was appointed Provost Marshal to the
Royal
Army,
which
placed
me
in a situation to wreck my vengeance on the
Americans. I shudder at the murders I
have
been
accessory
to,
both
with and without orders from the government,
especially while in New York, during
which
time
there
were
more
than 2,000 prisoners starved in the different
churches, by stopping their rations, which I
sold.
There
were
also
275
American prisoners and obnoxious persons
executed; out of all this number there were
only
about
one
dozen
public
executions, which chiefly consisted of British
and Hessian deserters. The mode for
private
executions
was
thus
conducted.
A guard was dispatched from the
Provost about half after12, at night, to
Barrack
Street
and
the
neighborhood
of Upper Barracks, to order the people
to shut their window shutters, and put
out
their
lights,
forbidding
them
not to presume to look out of their
windows
or doors, on pain of death; after which
the
unfortunate
prisoners
were
conducted,
gagged, just behind the Upper
Barracks, and hung without ceremony and
there
buried
by
the
black
pioneers of the Provost.

It
is
very
difficult
to
estimate the number
of American sailors captured by the British on both large and
small
privateers
and on navy wars hips during the war. It is certainly not fewer
then
9,000.
A very large percentage of the captured sailors were imprisoned
on the
Jersey or companion prison ships, where they were virtually
exterminated.
In the History of the City of New York,
Charles
Burr Todd asserted that "no less than ten thousand six hundred
and
forty-four
American prisoners perished in the Jersey during the war." But
what of
the other smaller ships, Whitby, Good Hope, The Prince of Wales,
Falmouth,
Scorpion, Strombolo, and Hunter? Two of these were so-called
hospital
ships.
The mortality rate on these must have been far less than the
Jersey
because
of better conditions or being less crowded. It would seem that
the Good
Hope was reserved for sea captains and other officers. In 1779,
nine
sea
captains overpowered the guard and got away in one of the ship's
boats.
Historians of the American Revolution
state
that 900 American privateers were captured by the British. If
that is
the
case, the average would certainly not be less than 12 per
privateer and
that would amount to 10,800. It is fair to assume that some
escaped,
some
were killed, some were released, and others were exchanged for
Loyalists.
It is almost impossible for a New
Yorker or
American to attempt in any way to justify the brutal treatment
and
murder
of thousands of American prisoners of war in British prisons or
in the
murderous prison hulks. There must be some underlying or
concealed
reasons
for such a barbarous violation of the laws of humanity and the
custom
of
warfare. The responsibility in a military organization rests
with the
top
officers. Out of the 20,000 prisoners in New York, there were
not more
than 5,000 captured soldiers: 3,000 surrendered at Fort
Washington,
1,000
at the battle of Brooklyn, a few hundred at White Plains, and in
the
capture
of Forts Clinton and Montgomery, and the rest in skirmishes in
Connecticut,
New Jersey, and Westchester.
There were about 9,000 sailors captured
from
the eastern seaboard. The remaining 6,000 were civilian Patriots
who
lived
in New York City, Long Island, Staten Island, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania,
Connecticut, and Westchester. General Howe, and Sir Henry
Clinton, who
succeeded him, apparently for military reasons, secretly adopted
a
program
approaching extermination because there was no place except
England to
send the prisoners. and probably England did not want them. New
York
was
to some extent a besieged city and might be attacked at any
time. An
adequate
food supply would then be necessary. Thousands of American
prisoners
would
also have been a serious menace in case of attack.
The author merely suggests possible
reasons
that may lessen, but which never can condone, the criminality
for such
murderous acts. It would not be fair to make such serious
charges of
culpable
neglect or designed cruelty against the commander in chief of
the
British
army or of a criminal thirst for riches on the part of David
Sprout,
without
definite first-hand evidence. Sprout, a Scotsman whose face put
his
scarlet
coat out of countenance, had two assistants: one Scottish and
the other
a refugee from New Jersey. The general character of the first
was
harshness
and of the second, kindness. The responsibility or blame should
not be
placed solely on the prison commissaries or deputies for the
cruel
death
of thousands of American patriots.
The following statement is by an
officer on
board the U.S. Frigate Confederacy that was captured by two
British
frigates:

"Being at the time of capture sick, he was put on
board one
of the hulks in the Wallabout that served as a hospital ship for
convalescents, but was as soon as somewhat restored
transferred to the Jersey to make room for others more
helpless." Here he experienced all the suffering, and witnessed
the horrors described by the Rev. Thomas Andros for five months.
The confinement in so crowded a place, a pestilential
air, the putrid and damaged food given to the prisoners
(procured by the commissaries for little or nothing, and
charged to the English government at the price of the best
provisions) soon produced a fever under which this young man
suffered
without medicine or attendance, until nature, too strong for
even such enemies, restored him to species of
health, again to be prostrated by the same causes. He said he
"never saw given to the prisoners, one ounce of wholesome
food. The loathsome beef they prepared by pressing, and then
threw it, with the damaged bread, into the kettle,
skimming off the previous tenants of this poisonous food as they
rose to the top of the vessel."

On the 18th of January, 1777, George Washington wrote to
Lord
Howe on the subject of naval prisoners:

“that I am under the disagreeable necessity of
troubling
your
Lordship with a letter almost wholly on the subject of the cruel
treatment which our officers and men in the Naval Department,
who are unhappy enough to fall into your hands received on board
the Prison ships in the harbor of New York.
From the opinion I entertain of your
Lordship's
humanity I will not suppose that you are privy of proceedings of
so
cruel and unjustifiable a nature and I hope that upon making the
proper
inquiry you will have the matter so regulated that the unhappy
persons
whose lot is captivity may not, in the future,
have the misery of cold, disease and famine added to their other
misfortunes.
You may call us Rebels, and say we
deserve
no better treatment, but remember, my Lord, that we still have
feelings as keen and sensible as Loyalists and will if forced
to, most assuredly
retaliate upon those upon whom we look as the unjust invaders of
our rights, liberties and properties.
I should not have said this much, but
injured
countrymen have long called upon me to endeavor to obtain
redress of
their grievances, and I should think, myself, as culpable as
those
who inflicted such severities, were I to continue silent.”

The
answer of Lord Howe was evasive and a general denial of the
charges.

Howe
was
a
poor
disciplinarian,
and naturally lazy
and indolent, who preferred the good things in life and did not
want to
be bothered with investigations that might take Lip his time or
reflect
on the British army's administration in New York. Judge Thomas
Jones,
an
ardent Loyalist, and in exile with the British, condemned
General Howe
bitterly in his book on New York during the war for inefficiency
and
disregard
even of the property, of the Loyalists, who were constantly
being
robbed
by British troops. General Howe's relationship with the wife of
Joshua
Loring, whom he had appointed commissary of the prisons, was a
scandal
well known among the Loyalists. Loring was finally relieved of
his
position
on charges of corruption and sent to England during the war,
where he
died
shortly afterwards, a disgraceful and despicable character.
Bancroft's History of the United States
drew
a tragic picture of the British prison ships in Charleston,
South
Carolina,
and stated, "of more than 3,000 confined in these ships all but
700
were
made away with." The situation among the American prisoners in
Savannah
was almost as bad. It would seem from this that there was a
definite
policy
of extermination of so-called rebel prisoners in these horrible
disease-infested
British hulks.
The British army commanders, both in
Charleston
and Savannah, were directly under the control of the commanding
general
in New York, first Sir Henry Howe, and next Sir Henry Clinton.
Fortunately
for the officers, many of them were exchanged, and the number of
officers
incarcerated in the living tombs were few. Most of them were
kept in
the
main provost prison in New York in very cramped quarters, but
their
chances
of exchange or survival were good.
Early in the war, the Continental
Congress
commissioned Lewis Pintard of New York to try to alleviate the
conditions
of the prisoners held there, which he did until the funds ran
out, but
continued with his own money until it was exhausted.
His nephew John Pintard wrote a
description
in the New York Mirror of September 10, 1831, of the treatment
of
American
officers in the Provost Prison during the Revolution:

“Cunningham roamed from cell to cell ..,
insulting the
noblest of the land He saw them suffering from cold, and he
mocked their cry for bread. For slight offenses he thrust them
into
underground dungeons. . . . The North-east chamber, turning to
the left on the second floor, was
appropriated to officers and prisoners of superior rank and
distinction, and was called Congress Hall. So closely were
they packed that when they lay down at night to rest, when their
bones ached on the hard oak planks, and they wished
to turn, it was altogether by word of command, "right-left"
being so wedged and compact as to form almost a solid
mass of human bodies .........”

Nathan Hale, just before his execution
as a spy, was permitted to write a brief note to his mother and
to Miss
Adams, to whom he was betrothed, in which he said, "I wish to be
useful
and every kind of service, necessary to the public good, becomes
honorable
by being necessary. . If the exigencies of my country demands a
pectiliar
service, its claims to the performance of that service are
imperious."
As he ascended the ladder, he turned to his executioner and
said, "I
only
regret that I have but one life to lose for my' country." The
brutal
provost
marshal Cunningham who was the chief of the execution, upon
reading his
other letters, destroyed them and exclaimed with an oath "the
damned
rebels
shall never know they had a man who could die so bravely."
It appears that the treatment of
American
prisoners became steadily worse as the war progressed. Actually,
the
Jersey,
the monster of them all, was only used as a prison ship the last
four
years.
Sometime after the war, in response to
a
request
from our government, the British army archives furnished a
partial list
of the American prisoners on the Jersey to the number of 8,000.
Some
twenty
years after the war, in 1804, the Columbian Society (Tammany
Hall)
undertook
to collect the bones of these Patriots buried at Wallabout Bay
and
transferred
them to a tomb in a wooden building nearby. Seventy years later,
the
people
of Brooklyn built a permanent tomb at Fort Greene Park, and
later
still,
in 1912, a monument was erected there to those early American
Patriots
who preferred death on stinking prison ships to dishonor and
disloyalty
to their country.
It is estimated that ten thousand
American
Patriots paid the supreme sacrifice for their country, mostly in
the
one
"living hell" ship, the Jersey, yet there were others, but not
as
deadly.
"Abandon ye all hope who enter here" applies accurately to the
infamous
Jersey.
The most outrageous of all the crimes
committed
by Cunningham was the hanging of 275 American prisoners of war
without
trial and in utter repudiation of all existing articles of war.
The
ignominious
and undercover hanging of war prisoners was a blot on the
British
military
government.
All of these Patriots could have
betrayed
the cause of liberty and independence in exchange for their
lives, but
preferred death. All they had to do was to sign a document of
allegiance
to the Crown and receive a free pardon by enlisting in His
Majesty's
Army
or Navy. If we were to single out any group of Americans for
outstanding
patriotism, it wotild be the prisoners in the British prison
hulks and
in the jails. These Patriot prisoners should be placed at the
top of
the
list of sublime courage and sacrifice in support of independence
and
freedom.
This recognition is long overdue.
After 200 years, the America people are entitled to know
the
blood-curdling truth and to learn about the heroism of our
Revolutionary
War Patriots, even unto death. by brock
fleming